'The sexual relation is in fact that we have no origin and no way of being the origins of ourselves. Relation is the archi-originary frenzy of self-constitution, self-engendering. This holds for all relations, and the relations of relations that together weave our existences-but the sexual is responsible for making evident and presenting the “this” itself.
This is why it divides itself in two: on the one hand, into the possibility of engendering another (which would be a “result” or a third term only in a fleeting sot of way, entering, in its turn, into sexed self-sectioning) and, on the other, the possibility of relation without relation, which is what we have been talking about since the beginning.
No result, no accounting, no reason given, and besides, no question posed: no end, in any sense of the word. No question, but an address, an appeal-sex appeal. An appeal that demands nothing but to the understood. It does not even really want a response, just to be thrown back again by the other in such a way that the relation takes place, back and forth, approach and repetition.
In Clarence Brown’s film Come Live with Me, the man has told the woman about fireflies, who light up in order to spark the sexual instinct in their fellow fireflies. Later, the woman returns to her room, which is separated from the man’s room in such a way that a ray of light can shine through the space above a partition and into where he is. She uses an flashlight-given to her earlier by the man because there was not light in her room-to send a signal to him, to signal her desire. This blinking light is not treated just as a signal. Here, between the reference to fireflies and the of the film-which comes without showing us any sexual relation-it becomes a sign with no signification beyond itself, not only the sign of a self-exposure but a sign that is itself entirely formed by its own exposition, its light, its brilliance, with a magnificent flash that sheds light on nothing and that only trembles, trembles like a spasm. Self like a luminous spasm in the night of relation.
I’ve spoken of desire: it is not a question of desire for an object. It is not relation to something: it is relation to (tension toward, at-tention to) nothing but the relation itself.'
'This is why we can add here a reflection on the language of sexual tradition, or language in sexual relation. When we speak in love (since this is also how we designate this act, a fact that surely requires more attention), also how er designate this act, a fact the surely requires more attention), it is not in order to say anything other than the relation itself (its desire, its pleasure). This tautology, which I propose to cal the erotic exclamation, has the remarkable characteristic of being one of the occasions (along with poetry and maybe also phatic utterances) where language is used in a way that carries it to the limit of significance. The formula is the exclamation repeated by the Sade: “I’m coming! [Je jouis!]. This is the linguistic redundancy of sex, or indeed a sexual redundancy of language, which moves these two major modes of relation toward one another. But it is not as if the one ever stopped approaching the another-without ever becoming confused with the other, but also never ceasing to refer to it as its condition or its most distant and most secret issue. We speak in order to come, and we come in order to speak-which is also to say that each one, both sex and language, substitutes for the other, ans also excluded the other, exhausts and excites the other;
“I’m coming!”—but also “You’re coming!” and also “Come!” (Blanchot and Derrida, the “come” of a coming without end)—says nothing, but it utters (brings out, exposes) the “there is” of the sexual relation, of this relation that there is an effect each time precisely where there is nothing to say about it, nothing to report.
And then-we say nothing, we begin again, we come again.'
Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus II: Writings on Sexuality, translator: Anne O’Byrne, publisher: Fordham University Press